


Sunlight and Silence

by Sheeana



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/pseuds/Sheeana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chell knows she has to keep going. She just wishes he would stop rambling so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunlight and Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chell-surname-redacted (failsafe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



> <3 from me

"No... no, I suppose that isn't the right way after all. Was it... this way? No... no, that's a dead end. Let's try this one! Oh, another dead end. Unfortunate, that. Oh well, oh well. Last time's the charm."

Maybe he still wanted her to talk to him. She did remember how, even if she didn't remember exactly what her voice sounded like right now.

She'd vowed at the very beginning, from the moment she understood that she wasn't just being tested, not to say a word. Silence, someone had once told her, is golden. And she didn't remember what that meant, or why it was important, but she knew that it irritated _her_.

No one had ever told this robot that silence is golden. When she paused at a junction to wait for him to decide which wrong way to take her this time, she closed her eyes and sighed.

"They said - get this - they said that I could fly. I _know_. Completely ridiculous, right? I've not got half the equipment needed for a machine to fly. Come to think of it, though... wouldn't that be great? I could fly up there, leave, escape, and... well, come to think of it, I'd have to leave you here. But you're brilliant! You'd get yourself out, wouldn't you?"

This time, he tugged her down the path to the right. She had no idea where they were, and she had no other indication of which way would lead them out, so she reluctantly carried him and let him guide her. Maybe he had the way out programmed into him. Or maybe not, but it was better than staying still. _She_ was dead, destroyed, voiceless, and it was irrational to be afraid of her now. But somehow Chell knew that _she_ would still find her eventually if she didn't keep moving.

They came to the end of another corridor. She had to come to a skidding stop right at the end, because suddenly the floor dropped away from beneath her. The robot managed to hide his eye against her chest as she held the portal gun up and closer to her body.

Another dead end. Beneath her, a shaft with bare cement walls dropped away into distant darkness. An elevator, maybe, but it wasn't in service anymore. She looked up the shaft; the robot peeked out and his bright blue eye peered upwards with her. At the very top, far too many levels up to estimate with any accuracy, a glimmer of light shone through a hole in the ceiling. She held out her hand. A beam of the light filtered down to fall against her skin.

"Well, yes, yes, _up_ is the way we want to go, but unless you've learned how to climb like an actual monkey, I think we'd best be off this way, then, right, come on, this way."

Sunlight, she remembered, not just from her brief time on the surface but from _before_ , was like this - a layer of warm light collecting on the surface of her skin. Golden, like silence. The lights in here were cold and white, or hot and red, but none of them were golden. She inhaled and wondered if she was breathing in the air from so far above. It smelled the same as everything else this far down - sterile, like hospital rooms and band-aids.

The robot suddenly bounced in her forcefield's grip. "Well we can't stay here all day!"

He was right. Every moment, every second, she expected to hear _her_ voice. She held the portal gun out in front of her again and turned around. Time to try another way. This time she ignored his tugging and turned left, down a long, straight hallway. She counted seventy-seven steps before they reached the next turn.

"Aaaaaaaah!"

She started at the sound of his shrieking and looked wildly left and right, but there was nothing there. No cameras, no turrets, no sing-song voices pleading with her not to harm them. She dropped him on the floor, and then lifted him up with her free hand to eye-level so he would be forced to look at her.

"Oh, sorry. Sorry! Nothing to see here, move along, move along. False alarm! Turns out I'm not dead after all."

When she didn't react except to glare at him, he began to rock back and forth in her grip, moving his eye left and right. 

"What? The last time I checked, that's the proper reaction to thinking you're dead. Mind you, I haven't checked in awhile. Not something you check often, how to react when you die. Morbid stuff."

She dropped him again and picked him up with the forcefield. They had to keep moving.

This time their chosen corridor came to an abrupt end in an enormous open room. Far below, conveyor belts brought deactivated turrets and turret parts to and fro. She stared down cautiously at them for a long moment, but none of them blinked at her. The only way forward was a long ledge, stretching out to the next walkway off to her left. She secured her grip on the portal gun and started inching across it.

"Fantastic. Tremendous. You're doing a great job. Walking along this ledge... that's it, that's it, feet on the ledge, not in the air. You could win some sort of award for this, you know? Not falling off of tall things award. And you'd win first place! Of all the people I've ever met, you are without a doubt the best at not falling off of tall things."

When they reached the other walkway, she hopped over the short distance onto it, and then continued across the room. Up. They had to go up. 

She ignored hunger and thirst and exhaustion until she couldn't anymore. There was no way to outrun _her_ , but eventually she had to stop. Just for awhile. Just long enough to rest.

In the pocket of the orange jacket she wore around her waist, she still had three energy bars. They tasted sweet on her tongue, like chocolate and cotton candy and apples, but also not like any of those things. She ate half of one and tucked the rest away, and then drank only enough water from the container she carried with her to sustain her. And then she had no choice but to sleep. The grated floor was hard and jabbed into her legs. She liked the smooth testing chamber floors better. They were more comfortable.

"You know what, I quite like this. You and me, the floor, the walls, nice... white paint," said the robot, spinning around and around on the floor beside her. He twisted back and forth and hummed. 

She opened her eyes to glare at him.

"Right! Right. Sleeping. Right. Oh, you humans," he said, as if this was some sort of great joke that she wasn't ever going to understand. "Always needing your sleep and your food and your water and your socialization. Much easier to be artificial, I say. Less... messy."

Chell inhaled and exhaled. The image of golden sunlight on her skin came again to her mind. If silence was golden, was sound a different color? White, gray, red, blue, orange, black, pink. Those were the colors. There were other colors, though. Yellow - daffodils and wheat. Green - pine trees and broccoli. Brown - pretzels and her hair. Purple - dinosaurs and bruises. She wondered if this robot remembered anything other than here. He was made here, but he wanted to leave, too.

"So... So. This is fun. Sleeping," he said. He started to hum again.

"Quiet," she said. It seemed to do the trick. He stopped talking.

So that was what her voice sounded like.


End file.
